Word: kramer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Crichton an American lands in the village after jumping from Odessa Darling, a B-24. He jumps out of disgust at the bombing of a village of civilians by the pilot of Odessa Darling, who attacks in order to get rid of his bombs before returning to base. Perhaps Kramer thought this episode would ruin our fun by reminding us of Vietnam. I think it is vital to giving the book its depth. Kramer leaves out another of the book's bombing scenes, in which a dozen people in Santa Vittoria are injured...
...KRAMER deprives us of another part of the village by making the Italians seem like children. In Crichton's book, outside authority-the Fascists and the Germans-is defeated by the people. There are endless problems to be overcome in successfully hiding the wine, and each is solved by a different person. The village works together with a respect for the individual talents its people. In Kramer's film, this disappears. The few difficulties portrayed are solved either by Bombolini or the returned Fascist, two men in positions of authority. By ignoring the contributions that the villagers make, Kramer destroys...
...Kramer answered questions after the preview of Santa Vittoria, rolling his answers off smoothly. If he were black today, he said, he would be out burning buildings. But he is not black, he pointed out, and so he made a movie as something "positive." After On the Beach and Judgment at Nurenberg, he wanted something with a sense of human triumph...
...Kramer describes himself as a "discarded liberal." He used to say that people dissatisfied with the system should "Cool it, it's all going to come together." "Well, it didn't." Kramer admits now. It is tempting to dismiss Stanley Kramer as a big-time film producer with six million dollars to make a movie. But standing in front of us, he looked vulnerable. His answers were nervous and he swept back his close-cut hair as if disorder might betray his appearance. His favorite film this year was "If," he said, because it destroyed his false sense of values...
Later I asked him whether big-time movies about young people were produced to make money from people's curiosity about drugs and sex. Sure they're commercial, said Kramer. But he could not make a movie from my viewpoint, he said. He could not in honesty pretend to put forward my view of the world...